


Omegalomaniac

by the_ragnarok



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Attempted Sexual Assault, Background Pete/Mikey, Consent Play, Endgame Pete/Patrick, F/M, Identity Issues, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mental Health Issues, Oblivious, Pete Wentz's Suicide Attempt (Best Buy Incident), Rape Fantasy, Threesome - M/M/M, mention of Bob/Mikey, mention of Pete/OCs, mention of Ray/Mikey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 14:13:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4482311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/pseuds/the_ragnarok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Figuring out who you are is hard enough without biology getting in the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic owes so much to so many people - to pinetreekate, morin and immoral_crow for cheerleading, to morin, immoral_crow, personalpanstump and myabibliophobiclife for the fastest beta ever. You are all awesome. <3
> 
> Elaboration of some tags in the end notes for those who want it.

“It’s normal to take time to figure it out,” they said at school during health class. “It’s not always easy to tell if you’re in heat or not. It’s natural to be confused.”

Patrick didn’t feel confused at all. He felt anger, simmering under his skin, his eyes zooming in on random classmates, wanting to tackle them down and _keep_ them there. Some of them smelled so fucking good and others _stank_ and others had no scent at all, and Patrick wasn’t even sure which of them infuriated him the most.

So riled up, he could almost forget that he was the shortest male kid in class, shorter than half the girls, too. Almost. It was self-preservation, rather than decency, that prevented him from attacking anyone, and when the urge passed it left him feeling hollowed out and ashamed.

“It’s all right,” his mother said, running her fingers through his hair. “I had pseudo-heats when I was young, too, everybody has them. You’ll grow out of it.”

Patrick leaned away from her, looked down at the floor. Muttered, “How do you know they’re not heat-heats?”

His mother’s laughter was kind. “Honey, I’ve known you since you were born. Don’t you think I’d be able to tell if you were an alpha?”

Patrick drew his knees up to his chest and hunched his shoulders. “I guess.”

~~

It was better to believe that, a relief, and he clung to it when school seemed unbearable, when jocks brushed by him in the halls joking about how they’re “alpha material”, loudly assessing everyone around them for omega potential. They never seemed to notice Patrick. Maybe it should have pissed him off. Mostly he was grateful.

Being invisible meant nobody paid attention to the bulge in Patrick’s pants, which was fast becoming a constant feature.

He managed, somehow, to wait till he got home before locking himself in his room to take care of it.

The zipper of his pants hissed going down and Patrick hissed right along with it, not bothering actually undressing any further, just shoving his hand and roughly groping himself. He was hard, so hard it hurt, he wanted to hold something down and fuck it until he was done.

Spilling once (inside his pants, hot and hurried) wasn’t enough. He scrambled out of his clothes and unto the bed, grinding down with no semblance of grace. This was better, let him hold on to his pillow for dear life, bite it both to muffle his moans and because his jaw wanted the pressure.

It was all wrong, though. Wrong texture, wrong temperature. Patrick grunted, frustrated, shoved hard against his hand and the sheets. Hissed at how insufficient it all was. He clutched himself harder and fervently tried to remember scents and cleavages, his math teacher in too-tight jeans bending over to pick up a pen he dropped.

That was working. He speeded his hand up, thought of standing behind Mr. Peterson, watching his brown eyes widen in shock when he shuffled back and felt Patrick there, how warm he must be.

The base of his cock was bulging, painful, and Patrick’s hand clamped around it unthinkingly. Tight, painfully tight but he needed it, couldn’t come until his grip on himself was _strangling_. Then he couldn’t _stop_ coming, jizz pouring out of him like a flood. Spewing all over the bed while Patrick could do nothing but pant for breath and watch his comforter get soaked.

 _I’ll have to wash it_ , Patrick thought, numb. His hand felt like it was welded to his dick, like he’d have to pry it off one finger at a time, muscles cramped into place.

The second thing Patrick did when finally he could will himself up was fire up his computer. (The first was a shower.) According to the internet, if you were a teenager who knotted while jerking off it just meant you’re a teenager. Betas did it, even omegas.

“Most vital is your own sense of identity,” Patrick read of the screen. The text was hot pink over a black background, and there was an animated dancing mouse in the top right corner. Patrick wondered who thought it was necessary. “How the hell do I know what my sense of identity is?” he asked it.

The little mouse carried on shaking its little ass, oblivious to Patrick’s problems. Probably it thought Patrick was just another beta with an attention-seeking problem. Probably it was right.

~~

If the knots were just a phase, Patrick hoped to God it passed quickly.

Knotting was _hard_ , pun not freaking intended , and the more time passed, the harder it was for Patrick to come without getting his knot to form. “Come on,” he muttered into his pillow, frustrated to near tears after nearly an hour of humping and trying every fucking thing he could bring to mind. He was a teenage boy; this could not be fucking normal.

The internet was no help. “Try varied positions,” like that was any goddamned help; all it did was make a variety of muscles Patrick was pretty sure he didn’t even have cramp. He was hard, so fucking hard, and Joe was supposed to come over in ten minutes and bring that guy he was starting a band with.

No helping it. Patrick went down the stairs and grimly filled a bowl with ice.

When the doorbell rang Patrick was still trying to struggle into a pair of shorts - the first pants-like item he could find in his closet - and he wasn’t hard anymore but he was still hurting, and not in the best of moods. It made him quiet and surly, just barely responding to anything Joe’s friend was saying.

Patrick only came alive when the music started playing. Story of his life. 

~~

Pete got himself all mixed up in Patrick’s life before Patrick could do anything about it or even notice; it was like he blinked and suddenly this guy was showing up at his house for dinner and charming his mom into giving them ice cream for dessert.

More surprisingly, Patrick didn’t mind. He knew himself to be prickly about his space, but Pete gave him no space to be defensive about. If Pete were a demon, Patrick would have been drawing a pentagram meticulously only to turn around and find Pete right inside it with him, earnestly asking who they were hiding from.

On the other hand, when Patrick blurted this thought out to Pete in all its sad, geeky glory, Pete laughed like the honk of a dying goose and declared Patrick to be his favorite human being.

“I’m a dork,” Patrick protested half-heartedly.

Pete just beamed harder at him. “Dude, I know. That’s what makes you awesome.”

The point Patrick was trying to make here was that against his better judgment, he found himself genuinely liking Pete. That’s what made everything so much worse.

Along his other annoying habits, Pete had a fondness for dragging Patrick to parties, spending exactly ten minutes draped over Patrick’s shoulders like the world’s least tasteful feather boa and disappearing to do something unwise and/or make out with someone.

Tonight it was both, Pete and some kid Patrick didn’t know pretending to have sex to everyone’s amusement. Only the _pretending_ part was, bit by bit, fading into actual public sex. As Pete’s friend, Patrick wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to be amused or horrified.

 _Turned on_ felt like an incorrect reaction. Unfortunately, that was all Patrick could pull off.

Pete was draped on his back, leaning on one shoulder to put his naked chest on display, light glinting off his nipple piercing, moaning totally fake moans while the guy above him grunted and rutted against him. “Oh, my big strong alpha,” Pete said in the world’s most annoying falsetto, “breed me, fill me with your strong pups.”

“This is so offensive,” someone muttered behind Patrick. Patrick would agree, he would, if only he could make his mouth form words again.

Then the dude on top of Pete laughed and nudged him. Pete obligingly turned over to the presentation position, weight on his knees and elbows, ass up. The guy moved a little too fast and elbowed Pete in the back; Pete let out a genuine pained yelp, then apparently decided to cover it with, “Oh fuck is that your knot? Give it to me, fuck, knot me, gimme.”

His falsetto slipped by this point, so that the words came out in Pete’s own throaty voice. The muscles in his biceps and thighs were moving, mesmerizing, trying to keep him up. The guy on top laughed and grabbed Pete’s hair, pulling his head back.

Patrick held himself very, very still; because if he didn’t, he thought he might either attack the guy or come on the spot. He wasn’t sure what would be worse.

~~

That Patrick got home that night without totaling the car was a minor miracle. His hands were shaking. His head was pounding. All he could think about was Pete with his head thrown back, moaning and begging for Patrick to knot him.

The base of Patrick's cock was thickening already, pressing painfully against his zipper. He pulled up next to his house, thinking about nothing beside his own bed and Pete.

It's not like Pete didn't take every opportunity to hop on Patrick's bed. The sheets, the pillow cases - fuck, probably the mattress itself was permeated with the scent of him. Patrick mushed his face into the pillow and groaned weakly, helplessly, rutting against the bed. Imagined Pete under him, arching upwards. Likely Pete would bite, would set his teeth deep in the meat of Patrick's shoulder. Likely his fingernails would leave welts in Patrick's back, so that days later Patrick would shudder at the feel of his shirt rubbing against them.

Pete would struggle, and yell obscenities, but absolutely nothing he could do would make Patrick let him up until he was done. Pete could do whatever he wanted so long as he stayed put and let Patrick nail that tight little ass of his. Patrick could imagine it, so vivid he could practically feel Pete clench around his cock. Trying to keep it out, maybe, but only making it better for Patrick in the process, milking his cock fast and sweet. 

_Fast_ was definitely the right word, because here Patrick was: after weeks of chasing slow, torturous orgasms, he was coming within five minutes of having entered the house. His pants were still on, for crying out loud. 

Patrick lay on top of the covers, blinking stupidly. Shame stole up and filled him, thick enough to choke.

Not enough to make him stop visualizing Pete as he was at the party, only not joking. Or joking, only to realize too late that Patrick wasn’t.

Patrick gripped his dick with a low wail, eyes stinging, face burning. All of him burning, really, so heated up he marveled his sweat didn’t directly evaporate to steam. His dick didn’t even soften in the wake of orgasm, still hard and wanting, as though Patrick hadn’t come at all.

Only his ruined pants showed the difference, and a brief, fleeting clarity of mind that allowed Patrick to lock his door.

~~

The sun shone through the window, his mom was beating frantically at his door, and the room stank of semen. Patrick stared at the ceiling. “I’m in heat,” he said to the empty room, quiet and wondering.

His mom’s knocking intensified. “Patrick! You were supposed to be in school an hour ago. Come out here!”

Patrick limped out of bed, unlocked his door and opened it a fraction. “Um.”

His mom opened her mouth to yell. Then her face twisted into a very strange expression and she closed it again. “You’re in heat,” she said after a moment. “I. I’ll call the school. And I’ll get some water up here for you.”

“Thanks.” He wasn’t thirsty. Didn’t want anything except to go back to bed and keep going where he left off - he’d have liked to have someone else there with him, in the same way he wanted a platinum record and a trip to Disneyland: a guy could dream.

He did have the presence of mind to text Pete. _sick. not coming to rehearsal today. prob contagious._ No guarantee it would actually stop Pete from coming over, but it was worth a shot.

~~

The next day at school, Patrick stuck close to the walls, sitting in the back of the class. Tried to take up as little space as possible, which turned out to be very little indeed. 

When the bell rang he hung back, not wanting to get caught up in the rush of students. Just the idea of so many people touching him without even _knowing_ turned his stomach. And what if they did know somehow, God, he couldn't even _think_ about it. He slunk to his next class, keeping his gaze cast down, which is why he noticed the guy sitting curled into himself on the floor, shivering intermittently. 

Patrick slowed down. He was opening his mouth to ask, "Are you okay?" when the scent hit him.

For the first few, unending seconds, all he could think was _Delicious_. The scent was like everything he'd wanted for the last few weeks, concentrated into a single mouth-watering whiff. Patrick's eyes locked on the guy, who shuddered and whined.

It would be so easy. Patrick could see it, how he'd nudge the omega to lie down. He could tell he wouldn't need to use force. The omega smelled like heat and want, things Patrick was intimately acquainted with. The omega would know that he could make it all better just by lying down and spreading his legs; Patrick could make it all better for him. For both of them.

The omega looked up. Patrick knew him vaguely: his name was Trey, he was on the basketball team. "Please," he said. His voice was raspy, it broke in mid-word. His eyes were suspiciously bright. "Anything you want, just don't tell. Just make it go away." 

Patrick took a step back, suddenly feeling ill. He took another and another, turning and breaking into a run, heart pounding. Hoping that Mr. Peterson was still where Patrick last saw him, patrolling the hall, almost collapsing with relief when he finds him there. Patrick called to him. "Someone needs help," he told Mr. Peterson, "please, come quickly."

Mr. Peterson's brow furrowed, but he followed Patrick. As they came closer to Trey, Patrick hung back, letting Mr. Peterson take the fore. Mr. Peterson knelt next to Trey, talking quietly to him, and helped him up. When they were both upright, Trey leaning heavily against him, Mr. Peterson turned to Patrick. "I'll see to him. You can go to class now," he said, and paused. "You did well."

~~

Class was already in session when Patrick got there, but it was study hall with Ms. Grippe who didn't really care when people came in, or if they did at all. Patrick squeezed by tables, hurrying to his accustomed seat in the back of the class. Nobody paid attention to him, everyone engrossed by the bunch of jocks playing catch with a tennis ball. 

"Dude, where's Trey?" one of them asked.

Another snorted. "Probably caught some omega scent." He waggled his eyebrows.

Patrick hunched down in his seat and prayed to become invisible. None of those guys appeared capable of smelling him. That was weird, since he could smell _himself_ , as well as the faint hints of Trey and Mr. Peterson still clinging to him. On the other hand, none of them smelled like anything in particular to him, except maybe too much body spray.

The jocks were tossing around suggestions of what Trey should do with this omega he supposedly caught, when a girl sitting in the front row turned around and said frostily, "That's disgusting."

The jock who came up with the omega idea smirked at her. "Hey, baby, that's just how we are. If you don't like it...." Patrick wasn't sure what the gesture he made was supposed to mean, but it looked nasty. A few of his friends joined in with catcalls.

"Fucking alphas," the girl hissed, and turned back around.

Patrick's pen snapped in his grip. He didn't have a spare, and ended up salvaging the inner ink tube and writing with it for the rest of the day. He came home with his hands covered in blue stains, shaking until he took up his drumsticks.

~~

"Dude, I'd hate to be those drums. Or whoever pissed you off."

Patrick jerked up, shoving sweaty hair back from his forehead. (It was getting way too long. Patrick needed to either cut it or find some way to keep it out of his eyes while he played.) In front of him, in all his grinning glory, stood Pete Wentz. "How did you get in?" Patrick asked, feeling like an idiot once the words escaped his lips.

Pete widened his eyes in the least convincing display of innocence Patrick has seen since— well, since the last time he talked to Pete in person. "I— I don't know. One minute the wall was there, then the next—"

"I let him in," Patrick's mom said from the doorway. "I'm sorry, sweetie, I figured you wouldn't mind - shouldn't I have?" She gave Patrick a concerned look, way more worried than just forgetting to announce a friend should warrant.

It made Patrick prickly. Pricklier. He threw his sticks down, muttered, "Whatever," and stalked up to his room.

Pete, not having a single ounce of self preservation, followed him up. "Dude, are you actually pissed at me?" he said once they got to Patrick's room. "You gotta tell me if I do shit that gets to you, I don't really take hints."

Patrick collapsed unto the bed and closed his eyes. He barely got any sleep last night. His shoulders and neck hurt. "Not your fault," he said, because _You didn't do anything_ wasn't entirely accurate. "I'm in a shitty mood and I hate everything."

The mattress sunk briefly as Pete bounced onto the bed beside Patrick. "Tell me about it," he said. From anyone else it would've been an expression of sympathy. From Pete, it was a genuine request.

Patrick shook his head. "Just people being assholes. Nothing you can do about it."

"Patrick Stumph, look at me," Pete said. Patrick opened his eyes. Pete using this tone meant serious business. "If you need me to punch someone in the head for you—"

Patrick rolled his eyes. "I can punch people myself if I have to, thanks." 

Pete scooted to lay his head over Patrick's chest, batting his eyelashes at Patrick. "Don't take this the wrong way, Trick, but you couldn't actually take anyone in a fistfight. Not unless they were, like, toddler-sized." 

"Like you, you mean," Patrick said, small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. 

Pete laughed and crawled closer, so that his chest was flush against Patrick's side. "Like me," he agreed. "C'mon, let's go rehearse some shitty music. Bet you anything you'll feel better afterward." He stood up.

"No bet," Patrick said, accepting Pete's proffered hand up. "I always feel better after I play."

~~

Rehearsal did make things better, and not only because belting out Pete's lyrics was a good sort of release. It was just the four of them in Pete's basement, and for the first time in days Patrick could relax. He didn't have to worry about getting found out, and he didn't have to feel like a horrible person for wanting the things he wanted. As long as he focused on his guitar and not on the strip of exposed skin where Pete's shirt rode up, he didn't have to want anything at all.

It was not their best rehearsal but it was okay. It left Patrick with music in his head, rather than filthy images, which was an improvement. 

Joe asked for a ride home after, which Patrick was happy to provide. He even refrained from dissecting everything they needed to improve with the songs. In return, Joe didn't try to take over the radio, which was playing In the Court of the Crimson King. He did hang on in the car when they got to his place, though, turned to Patrick and asked, "So, you manifested?"

Patrick startled and accidentally leaned on the alarm.

Joe waved his hands, pacifying. "Hey, if I'm totally wrong or you don't want to talk about it—”

"It's fine," Patrick said. "Shit. Is it that obvious?"

Joe tilted his head, giving the question serious thought. "Only because I know you," he said. "You carry yourself differently."

Patrick figured out that was Joe's oblique way of referring to the semi-permanent hard-on Patrick had these days. "Do you think the others will mind?" He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 

Joe stared at him. Slowly he said, "Why would they mind?"

"You know. Alphas," Patrick said. Joe seemed no closer to enlightenment. "With the whole. Pinning people down and, and breeding them. Thing."

Joe's eyes just went wider with horror. "You think we'd do that to you?"

"What? No! I think they'll worry I'll do it to them!"

It took Joe something like ten minutes to stop laughing after that. He kept slowing down only to catch sight of Patrick's face and start cracking up again.

Patrick was contemplating kicking him out of the car. Maybe while it was moving. "If you have such a hard time believing I'm an alpha, maybe you can…." He failed to come up with a good ending to this sentence.

Joe just shook his head, shoulders still quivering with quiet laughter. "I— okay, yeah, I wasn't expecting that. But dude, that's not what's funny."

"Then what?" Patrick said, wary. 

"Patrick,” Joe said, wide eyed and earnest. "You're in a group with Pete Wentz. You wouldn't manage to freak any of us out if you tried. He stuck his tongue in Andy's mouth the other day and Andy just yelled at him for eating a hamburger before that. "

"That was pretty rude of him," Patrick said.

Joe waved that off. "Of course it was. It's _Pete_. That was my point." He smiled at Patrick and jostled his shoulder. "Anyway, did you want to keep it a secret from them?"

Patrick made a face. "I don't like keeping secrets. I don't know, I just can't see myself going to them and _telling_ them."

"Say no more." Joe nodded at him. "Consider that taken care of. Anyone else you'd like to spread the news to - or keep it from?"

Shit, Joe was a good friend sometimes. Most times, even. Patrick shrugged. "Whatever, I don't care. If somebody wants to know, let them know." On impulse, he sniffed the air tentatively. Joe just smelled like smoke and Cheetos, the way he always did. "You manifested?"

Joe shrugged one shoulder. "Figure so, yeah. Beta, though, so it doesn't make much of a difference." He stretched. "Man, I do _not_ miss pseudo-heats. Does the real thing suck as much?" Patrick let his small shudder answer for him. Joe clucked his tongue sympathetically. "Hey, look on the bright side. You're like, twenty percent less likely to end up divorced and bitter."

"Joy. Now I just need to ask someone out who won't _laugh_." Patrick glared at Joe.

"Dude, you were asking me out?" Joe said, giggling as he ducked Patrick's sloppy punch. "I hate to tell you, but you need to work on your courting technique." He unbuckled his seatbelt and all but fell outside. 

"Ha," Patrick said to the empty inside of his car, vindicated at last.

~~

As far as Patrick knew, there weren’t any omegas in the music scene. Then again he didn’t think there were any alphas there till he turned out to be one, so maybe he was just oblivious. Not like he was gonna walk up to people and start sniffing them.

It didn’t make much of a difference for him. Once in a blue moon, maybe, he’d start talking to someone only to have them smile brightly and make a quick escape, but he couldn’t be sure if it was because they’d pegged him for an alpha or just, like, his personality.

Andy and Pete and Joe treated him exactly the same, so Patrick was overall okay with this.

The heats weren’t much better, but at least they got regular enough that Patrick could block them out on his calendar, fit rehearsal schedules around them and make sure Pete knew not to drop by. He’d expected Pete to be more of a dick about it, but Pete was actually surprisingly circumspect.

“Are you afraid I’ll get heat-addled and pounce you?” Patrick said to him, suspicious.

Pete bounced his eyebrows at Patrick. “Afraid’s not the word I’d use.” Then he planted a sloppy kiss on Patrick’s cheek, and Patrick broke into a helpless smile.

Then one by one the omegas started showing up.

“Hide me,” a pretty girl with kohl-lined eyes hissed at Patrick before clutching his arm and smiling brightly at another girl with a trench-coat and a scowl.

Patrick had no idea what she wanted him to do. He was a head shorter than trench-coat girl and even eyeliner girl probably outweighed him. He smiled blandly. “Can I help you?”

Trench-coat girl scowled harder, then shook her head and turned away.

Patrick turned to look at eyeliner girl. “What was that?”

“Thank you so much,” she said fervently, leaning close to kiss his cheek. “Some exes just won’t stay exes, you know?” Patrick didn’t, seeing as you’d need to have a relationship before exes were a problem. The girl didn’t wait for an answer, though, before waving and leaving, yelling, “And tell Joe I love him!” as she disappeared back into the crowd.

Later Patrick cornered Joe. “What the hell have you been telling people about me?” He paused. “Also, a girl with a scary ex sends her love.”

Joe nodded. “Oh yeah, Sandy. I figured you wouldn’t mind, Brenda is seriously bad news.” He gave Patrick a curious look. “I just told her you were around and you’d be okay scaring her ex away.”

“Uh, hello? Have you met me?” Patrick gestured down at his own 5’4’’ frame. “I think I could maybe scare away a bunny rabbit. On a good day.” 

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” Joe flagged the bartender. “C’mon, have a beer. Relax. You did your good deed for the day.”

Patrick subsided and accepted his beer, along with a suspicious look from the bartender. Joe never even got carded anymore, just because he could cultivate a beard. Life wasn’t fair.

~~

Sandy was the first, but she was far from the last.

Suddenly, Patrick couldn’t hit a party or a club without some omega finding shelter behind him, pretending to be mated to him, or just needing to be escorted home because of sudden onset heat.

The last one wasn’t even Joe’s fault, or anyone’s but Patrick. He’d smelled the boy from across the room, drifted closer; while it made Patrick burn with shame, he hadn’t done it out of any noble purpose. He hadn’t thought at all. He’d smelled, and wanted, and approached.

The boy was sitting on a sofa with his legs spread, glassy eyed. He looked like he’d maybe had a couple drinks too many, except Patrick couldn’t smell alcohol on him beyond the general ambient levels. Another guy was sitting beside him, hand rubbing up the boy’s inner thigh, approaching the boy’s evident bulge. The boy was shaking, such minute movement that Patrick only spotted it due to an alpha’s increased perception. He wasn’t struggling or resisting, but neither did he seem entirely happy.

Patrick wasn’t proud of it, but he actually growled at the groping guy.

Groping guy paused, launching a toothy smile up at Patrick and raising his hands in the air. “Hey, no hard feelings,” he said, scuttling back. “I didn’t realize he was taken.” He lowered his hand. “One more for the road?”

Patrick snarled.

The guy’s hand didn’t make contact. “Okay, guess not. Sorry about that. I’ll be going.” He stood up and slunk away.

Throughout this exchange, the boy didn’t move or speak. Patrick went to him, hands fisted loosely to remind himself not to touch. “Are you okay?” he asked the boy. “Did you come here with friends? What’s your name?”

“Phil.” The boy blinked. “Why’d you make him leave?”

Patrick felt his face heating up. “I thought you didn’t— should I call him back?”

Phil shook his head, slow and languid. “Nah. I think I like you better.”

Was this what an aneurysm felt like? Patrick wasn’t sure. Especially since he doubted those came with raging hard-ons. “You’re in heat.”

“Yeah,” Phil said slowly. Like he was wasted, or maybe like he thought Patrick was. “And you’re an alpha. You challenged him for me.”

Patrick wriggled uncomfortably. God, why was this so complicated - Phil smelled like everything Patrick wanted, and he was lying down there practically on offer, but something just screamed _wrong wrong wrong_ at Patrick here and he couldn’t even tell what it was. “How about I take you home,” he tried.

Phil shrugged. “Here is okay too.” He got up, though, and trailed after Patrick as he frantically searched for Joe. Joe knew everyone, he’d know what to do.

Evidently Joe knew Phil, judging by the wide-eyed look he gave Patrick. “Why is he even here? He’s like _twelve_ , oh my God, his brother will kill me.”

“’M fourteen,” Phil muttered, and okay, that explained some of Patrick’s misgivings.

No time for trivialities. “Is his brother here?” Patrick asked. Joe pointed him out. Patrick nodded thanks and dragged Phil over.

Phil’s brother was pretty freaked out by the entire situation. “Since when are you an omega?” he asked Phil incredulously.

Patrick didn’t have patience for this. “Since now,” he said. “Please take him home before he does something he seriously regrets in the morning.”

Phil’s brother narrowed his eyes at Patrick. “Are you an alpha?” He said it like an accusation. “How do I know you didn’t—”

“He didn’t,” Phil interjected. His eyes looked a bit clearer now, if his face was flushed. “God, nobody did anything, can we just go home already? I need,” he shifted uncomfortably, trying to adjust himself in his pants.

Judging by his pained expression, Phil’s brother didn’t miss any of that. “Fuck, you’re an embarrassment,” he said, “I gotta go find Amy before we go, wait here.”

Phil backed into the wall, crossing thin arms over his chest and staring mulishly at his brother’s back. Patrick kind of wanted to go home himself, take care of his response to the pheromones Phil was throwing out, but he couldn’t just leave him there.

“You’re not, though,” Patrick said before he could think about it. “If your brother’s embarrassed by you it’s because he’s a shithead, not because you did anything wrong.”

“Yeah, says you,” Phil said, but his shoulders got fractionally less tense. He threw a nod at Patrick when his brother finally came back, complaining all the while about how he knew it was stupid to bring Phil along and how their parents are going to murder both of them. Patrick waved at him like an awkward dork and considered the relative merits of leaving versus burying himself on the spot.

The party seemed duller without Phil’s scent lighting up Patrick’s senses, not worth bothering with. He was hunting for his coat when he felt a familiar weight draped across his back. Patrick let himself sag down onto an unoccupied beanbag and turned around to see Pete’s grinning face.

“You are my hero,” Pete said, leaning his forward against Patrick’s. “Let me buy you a drink. Or a small tropical island. Or our very own space station.”

“The drinks here are free, so at least you can afford one thing on that list,” Patrick said, grinning back helplessly. On impulse, he wiggled forward, throwing his arm over Pete’s waist.

Pete stiffened for a moment, but before Patrick could apologize and retreat, Pete hooked his leg over Patrick’s and aggressively nuzzled his cheek. “No, hey, Trick, don’t go.” Patrick felt Pete’s eyelashes sliding against his cheek. “I was surprised, that’s all. You never hug me. And like, I really appreciate the way you let me hang all over you all the time but you get that you don’t have to, right?”

It didn’t sound like an accusation, but Patrick tensed anyway. “I like it when you do.” It came out small, like a confession. “I always like it.” The words just slipped out of him, like tonight opened up a hole in his heart and his feelings were dripping all over the floor.

Pete drew back. His pupils were dilated and Patrick could smell a faint hint of alcohol on his breath. Desire coiled low and warm in Patrick’s belly, his skin itching to be closer to Pete. “I like you,” Pete said, and their mouths were a mere breath apart.

Neither of them came any closer, though. After the first moment’s rush of anticipation, Patrick didn’t even want to. It was better like this, close and familiar, knowing that he loved Pete and that it was fully mutual. This was safe, and good, and Patrick was going to jerk off thinking about this for months as it was. He didn’t really need any more.

Pete eventually fell asleep with his mouth mashed against Patrick’s shoulder. They stayed that way, Patrick periodically nodding off and drifting back awake, until it was five AM and a distressed looking guy - presumably the one whose house it was, came by yelling, “My parents are coming, everybody get out!”

~~ 

Their first tour was barely even deserving of the name, just the four of them rattling around Illinois in a van that smelled like spilled beer and feet. It was short - less than two weeks - which meant they could schedule it to make sure it was smack between Patrick’s heats, which turned out to be clockwork regular.

Pete, apparently, wasn’t as fortunate.

“Pseudo-heat,” Pete told him, bitter. He’d been curled up around an ice pack - one of those portable chemical ones - since this morning, making miserable little sounds. “You wanna put your knot in me? You have a way of making my brain less fucked up? No? Then fuck off and let me die in peace.”

Patrick blushed a little but came to sit beside Pete anyway, rubbing tentatively at the small of his back. “Shit, those suck.”

“Tell me about it.” Pete arched under Patrick’s hand like a cat. Patrick tried to be a good friend and not look at Pete’s pants too much. “Urgh. Keep doing that.”

“C’mon, I’ll rub your back.” He helped Pete move into a full lying position - or as close to it as they could get in the crowded van - and instinctively sniffed the air. Nothing but Pete’s usual smell, sweat and hair product, the kind of scents Patrick thought of as “baseline human”. Not omega scents, not heat scents.

Still, pseudo-heat or an actual one, Pete’s misery was real enough. He groaned appreciatively when Patrick dug his fingers into Pete’s thighs. “Lower back aches can happen because your thighs tense up,” he told Pete. “I saw it on the learning channel.”

Pete just grunted. Spread his legs, an automatic unthinking gesture that had Patrick half-hard just from the implications of it. He swallowed and nudged Pete. “Hey, careful. Don’t kick anything.”

“I’ll kick whatever I want,” Pete muttered, mutinous. Then Patrick dug his thumb into a particularly tense spot and Pete arched his neck, panting, “Ahhh, fuck, that’s good.”

Joe stared at them. “You’re all weirdos,” he said, in such a spot-on Sam the American Eagle impression that even Pete gave a rusty little laugh.

For the rest of the ride Patrick sat in the back with Pete’s head pillowed in his lap while Andy drove and Joe navigated. Occasionally he petted Pete’s hair, or sang to him, but mostly he just stayed close.

After they passed Elmhurst Andy stopped the car and looked back, frowning. “You gonna be okay to perform tonight?”

“I’m gonna be fucking awesome,” Pete said in a tight voice. Patrick rotated his fingers slowly over a hard knot of muscle in Pete’s neck until Pete subsided, pressing an absent kiss to the top of Patrick’s thigh.

When they went on stage, though, Pete really was awesome. He threw himself around the tiny stage and cozied up to Patrick during the songs and introduced the songs and thanked the crowd, and if anybody noticed he was rock-hard during it all, nobody seemed to mind.

Once the show was over, though, Pete promptly disappeared. “Probably hooked up,” Andy said when Joe asked where the fuck Pete was. “He’s usually back in time to leave, though. Enjoy the extra leg space.”

Patrick hesitated. “You sure he’s okay?”

Andy gave Patrick a measuring look. “Pete can make his own decisions. He’s a big boy.”

“Yeah, he’s not one of your damsels in distress,” Joe said, poking his head back out of the van. “Dude, you need to loosen up.”

“I just asked if he was okay.” Patrick snapped his guitar case shut with more force than strictly necessary. “Not that either of you dicks seem to care.”

“We care.” Andy’s warm hand settled on Patrick’s back.

Normally he’d find that soothing; now it was anything but. Patrick wrenched away, muttered, “Whatever,” and went to find a corner to curl up in with his iPod.

He looked up five songs later, and there was Joe looking down at him. Patrick paused the music, sighed, removed one earphone and looked up. 

"Dude, " Joe said, "you need to get laid."

Patrick pointedly pressed _play_. As he brought the second earphone back up, though, Joe grabbed his wrist.

"No, seriously," Joe said. "What's gotten into you? Are you actually jealous of Pete?"

Either the _of_ or the _Pete_ parts of the sentence were incorrect, but Patrick wasn't going to tell Joe that. He glared wordlessly instead.

Joe crouched till his face was level with Patrick's. "Okay, be honest with me here. How long has it been?"

It took Patrick a minute to actually parse what Joe said. "I can't answer that. That's like, division by zero."

Joe's eyebrows rose. "Wait, you mean you never—?"

"Announce it a little louder," Patrick said tightly, glancing furtively to see if anybody was close enough to hear. "No, I haven't had sex yet. Cut me a break, will you? I'm barely even legal and my dick is basically an unexploded bomb."

He ended up kicking Joe in the ribs several times to make him stop giggling. At least it was an easy reach, since Joe'd flopped on the floor like a narcoleptic puppy as soon as the first laughing snort came out.

"That's lyrical genius, Patty," Joe said, wheezing. "You've gotta tell Pete, he'll put it in a song. No, wait, scratch that, I'll tell him."

Patrick raised his boot so the possibility of kicking Joe in the head was clear.

Joe raised his arms in mock-surrender. "Okay, fine, I won't. But you gotta promise to come hooking up with me after the next show. I'll be your wingman. We'll bond."

"Maybe I actually wanted to wait for sex with someone I cared about," Patrick said, arms crossed over his chest.

Joe draped an arm over his shoulder. "Yeah, and maybe Pete is secretly an actual omega. C'mon, go out with me. It'll do you good."

~~

To Patrick's surprise, it did, although not for the reasons Joe probably expected.

The beta Joe tried hooking him up with was nice. Possibly too nice. Patrick bought her a drink and listened to her talk about her acapella folk group, which was pretty interesting.

When Patrick came back to the van half an hour later, Joe looked at him wide-eyed. "That soon?"

Patrick half-shrugged. "She doesn't like Prince. It's a deal breaker."

"You," Joe said with disgusted awe, "are seriously the weirdest person I've ever met."

Pete swatted Joe on the back of the head - gently, though, by the sound of the thump; mostly cushioned by Joe's hair. "Dude, he's got a point. What kind of person doesn't like Prince?"

Patrick grinned at Pete. Later it was his turn to drive, and Pete called shotgun. They spent the rest of that drive singing Prince hits, Patrick working through _I Wanna Be Your Lover_ in his best approximation of a sexy voice while the radio played news and commercials and Pete smiled wide at him.

In the dimming light, Patrick thought maybe the look in Pete's eyes was a little like adoration.

~~

The upside of that whole thing was that Joe let Patrick and his lingering virginity be afterward. He did continue to make fun of Patrick for his (as Joe put it) "Savior of the omega schtick".

Fuck him. It wasn't like Patrick was putting on shiny silver armor every time he went out. He didn't even put on eyeliner or particularly tight pants. He'd just be hanging out in his normal clothes, business as usual, and sometimes people asked him to stand beside them until some asshole went away. It wasn't a huge deal.

That was what Patrick was expecting when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He'd had a blunt earlier that evening, and was feeling particularly mellow and full of good will. The tap had also come with unusually good timing: normally they always came just when he spotted someone he really wanted to talk to, or when he'd finally got the bartender to pour him a drink, or when a song he particularly liked and wanted to give his serious attention to came on. Now, though, he was just hanging near the wall and trying to remember the word for the plastic bits on shoelaces.

"Hi," said the tapper. She was shorter than him, just by a bit. Her face was vaguely familiar. "Remember me?" She crouched and said, "Hide me!" in an exaggerated squeaky voice.

That she hadn’t sounded anything like that, but the words were enough to make the connection for Patrick. "Oh, yeah! Uh. Sandy?" She grinned and nodded. "You didn't have the, ah," he gestures at the image of a snake crawling out of a bleeding heart on her neck.

She blushed prettily. "Oh, that's just something my friend drew. Thanks, though. Say, you got a minute?"

Patrick glanced around the room. Didn't seem like anybody was looking at them too hard, but he never claimed to be the most perceptive. "Do you need anything?"

Sandy bit her lip. "Um, yeah. Look, how 'bout I buy you a beer and we go outside to talk?"

That sounded vaguely ominous, but on the other hand, free beer. Patrick shrugged and followed her.

Outside was cool. Patrick huddled in his jacket. Sandy, despite the thin cloth of her shirt, didn't seem to feel the chill at all. She wasn’t touching her own drink, either, which was what clued Patrick in.

Not that he could come out and say it. They drilled it into them in health class: _Never ask an omega if they’re in heat._ Of course, some of the jerkier people in Patrick’s class would then come out and do just that, or worse, come close and pretend they could smell it. On the one occasion Patrick remembered them getting caught, the asshole had defended himself with, “What, I don’t know that he’s an omega! It was just a joke! Ease up!”

Patrick didn’t want to be that person.

Luckily, he didn’t have to, since Sandy put her beer down and said, “So I was wondering if you’d like to come home with me and help me with my heat.”

“Uh,” Patrick said. He was a smooth operator like that.

Sandy’s smile had an edge to it. “Is that a yes or no? I’d like to get out of here while my judgment is still sound.” Her mouth twisted. “I do not want to end up heat-dialing Brenda again.”

Well. If she put it like that. “Sure,” Patrick said, breath sticking in his throat. “I mean—” he was about to make some more inquiries, like, _Me? You’re certain? Maybe you’re thinking of someone else, somebody with sex appeal?_

Sandy, it appeared, didn’t have time for second guessing. “My car is that way,” she said, turning in that direction, not even looking to check if Patrick was following her.

He followed. Of course he followed. What was he, nuts?

~~

Just inside her bedroom, he paused. “Um,” he said, turning various shades of red all over. “I don’t, I haven’t.”

Sandy shrugged, bra strap slipping off her bare shoulder. “I could tell you what to do.”

“Please do,” Patrick said, all rushed with relief and gratitude.

She smiled and tugged her bra strap off her other shoulder. “Kiss me,” she indicated the spot that she just uncovered, “here.”

Her skin was soft and slightly tacky with sweat, dragging against his lips. He got his tongue out against it, overwhelmed by his need to taste, before remembering to ask if he could.

Before he could back off, though, she grabbed him by the nape. “Yeah,” she breathed. “That’s good. Keep going.”

Patrick kept going.

Kissing her skin seemed like the thing to do, so he did more of that, up her throat, biting gently along her jaw - that made her give an appreciative little hiss - nuzzling behind her ear, smelling hair product, tasting ink from the drawing on her neck.

She turned to lie on her stomach. “Could you…?” She arched her back so her vertebrae stood out in sharp relief. Patrick wasn’t too certain what she meant, but she gasped when he kissed down her spine so he guessed that was the general idea.

His dick, hard since she’d asked him home, ached in his pants. He didn’t dare take them off until she growled, “Fuck me already, Jesus fuck,” and then he ripped them off in such a hurry his zipper would probably never be the same.

It wasn’t like porn, it wasn’t like anything he’d ever experienced or seen. His hands shook whenever he pulled them away from her skin, but while he touched her, it felt like his fingers knew the right course to take. Muscle memory for something he’d never practiced, like learning another instrument, making minute adjustments to familiar actions as he learned her responses.

Just like music, really: he touched her carefully until she sounded about right, then played with variations, growing confident as the sounds she made grew louder, harmonious, a climactic crescendo fading into sweet satisfaction.

~~

He kept his arms around her, after, his knot still holding her full. It was amazing what he could smell now that he wasn't blinded by need and urgency and vague terror. Her birth control. That she was mostly vegan. A cat - probably not hers since the apartment didn't smell like it.

Affection. She smelled like that, and resignation, and weariness, and smug satisfaction. He put his face close to her neck and inhaled that odd mixture. Her skin was very soft.

Her fingers skipped over his neck. "You were good," she said.

Impossibly, he felt himself blushing. "Thanks."

Sandy shifted under him. "See, this is the bit where it gets awkward," she said. "Because I had a great time and I honestly like you. But I've also had alphas turn to me in the morning and start talking about how many kids we're gonna have, and that's not a conversation anyone should be faced with before coffee. _But_ if I tell you now that I don't want anything steady with you, just like that, it just seems unnecessarily harsh."

Patrick took a moment to fully appreciate that dilemma. He wasn't even sure what he wanted, except, "Can you not kick me out in the next half hour? And let me take a shower before I go?"

She laughed. It was a weird sensation, still buried in her as he was, the vibrations moving through both of them. "You can stay for breakfast, provided that it's understood to be just breakfast." She yawned, blurring her next words a little. "And maybe round two. But that's it."

Instead of replying he kissed the top of her head. The scent of her was a better hit than the joint, and she hadn't told him anything that she didn't sincerely mean. He would have smelled it otherwise; he knew it in his bones.

"How do betas even manage," he said, suddenly horrified by the very thought. "I mean - can you even imagine this conversation when we can't smell each other?"

She shuddered dramatically. "I know, right?" She kissed his collarbone lightly. "Reason number eleven Brenda was seriously bad news. Trust me, baby, don't date a beta. They'll break your heart and blame you for it."

Patrick poked her lightly. "Go to sleep. You can tell me about your ex when we're not literally glued to each other."

~~

Patrick wasn't sure what happened or how, but that encounter with Sandy was like when you sit in the picnic, and see an ant walking on your foot, and suddenly realize you sat over the nest and have bugs crawling all over you. Except way less horrifying and sometimes actually pretty cool. Like, Patrick would be out at a party or a show and his attention would be magnetized to some person and he'd know: this is an omega in heat.

For the most part, he didn't do anything about it. It wasn’t any of his business. Except once or twice he'd look again, and there the omega was right next to him. Patrick figured that they wanted him to scare off assholes, which, fine; if he could help, why not.

Until one pretty scene kid in skinny jeans and guyliner grabbed Patrick, laid a sloppy kiss on him, and huffed, "Christ, what's a guy gotta do to get some action around here?"

"Tell me you're interested?" Patrick said, kinda dazed.

"This is me telling," the guy said grimly, and practically dragged Patrick away to his place. 

After that, when omegas turned up by his side, Patrick asked. Tentatively, at first, with lots of _Ums_ and _Only if you really want_ and _Or I could just go away if you're not interested, or stay here and keep others away, whatever you feel like_. It took about three exasperated omegas rolling their eyes at him - one of them burst laughing in Patrick's face before plunking herself in his lap - before he caught on that their noses were just as sensitive as his, and if they were hanging around him being flirtatious they were doing it for a reason.

He didn't say yes every time. Once the girl was about fourteen. Another time it was someone whom Patrick knew had a girlfriend. Then there was one of Pete's exes - which, worlds of no. Entire _galaxies_.

Not that Pete seemed to appreciate that. "You should have gone with him. He gives amazing head," he said, appearing behind Patrick's back the way he did sometimes, trying to get Patrick to yelp or jump. It didn't happen this time, but only because Patrick's senses were heightened with pheromones. 

Also, frustration. He'd said no, but it wasn't exactly easy. “Excuse me for trying not to be a shitty friend,” Patrick said, twisting away from Pete’s hand on his shoulder.

“You could never,” Pete said, serious the way he got sometimes. “You could fuck the person I’m dating right now in front of me and you’d still be an awesome friend.”

“No, I really fucking couldn’t,” Patrick said, appalled. “Deanna fucking terrifies me, and also you’d kill me before I got my belt off.”

“You’re such a fucking literalist,” Pete said fondly. Then he spilled his beer down Patrick’s shirt, because that was the sort of shit Pete did.

~~

The problem was that Pete did a lot of shit, okay, and that shit was starting to escalate.

Beer down Patrick’s shirt at a random party? Fucking annoying, but not like he hadn’t done worse to himself. Supposedly-accidentally puking on Patrick’s clothes on their next tour? Whatever, laundromats existed for a reason and most shirts he took were fucking filthy anyway.

Groping Patrick on stage, though, was beyond the fucking pale.

He’d waited till Patrick was smack in the middle of a guitar solo, which he needed to concentrate on, fuck Pete very much, before clinging to his back. Patrick hadn’t even noticed - like he just said, concentration - only vaguely registered the warmth against his back as Pete, and therefore safe.

Patrick and his subconscious really needed to have a fucking heart-to-heart about what constituted safe.

Wetness in Patrick’s ear was the first hint that clued him off something was wrong, followed by the sheer volume of response from the audience. His guitar solos got attention sometimes, but never that much.

Then it got really, really obvious that Pete was humping him. So obvious that just as Patrick was striking up the finishing chords, he’d stumbled and for just a second Pete was draped over him, still humping, while Patrick was kneeling and hanging on to his guitar like his life depended on it.

Only for a moment, though. Then Pete’s weight was off him, and Pete and Joe were helping him up, and Pete yelled into a microphone, “Ladies and gentlemen, our very own Patrick muthafuckin’ Stump!”

“I hate you,” Patrick muttered in Pete’s ear as he eased into the next song. Pete pretended not to hear him.

As soon as the set ended, Pete disappeared. Possibly to fuck someone who was overly impressed by his bass playing or onstage sex show. Not that Patrick cared. He could wait to execute his vengeance.

There was someone standing next to the stage, though, giving Patrick a hopeful look, something clutched in her hand. Patrick closed his guitar case, shouldered it, and went to her. “Hey,” he said, dredging up a smile. “Can I help you?”

She was tiny - two heads shorter than him, and skinny. She had a necklace with a little Omega-letter pendant, and she handed him a crumpled copy of the set list. “Would you sign it for me?”

Patrick blinked twice in rapid succession, smile widening a bit. “I— yeah, of course.” They had a few fans, he knew, kids following them around who sang the words back to them, but mostly they wanted Pete’s autograph. This was a first. “Anything in particular you want me to write?”

“Anything you feel like.” She blushed. Then, all in a rush, she said, “I know you were probably kidding, on the stage tonight, but. You don’t have a lot of omegas in bands, you know? And it means a lot to me to see someone like me on a stage. Even if it’s just a show. So, thank you.” She all but snatched the signed set list and ran away.

Patrick wasn’t sure how, but he felt the twin urges to hug Pete Wentz and strangle him get _even stronger._

~~

"Fine," Patrick said. "You can molest me on stage if you absolutely have to."

Pete closed his mouth, blinked at Patrick, and pouted. "But I still have reasons I didn't get to."

"Your reasons aren't why I'm doing it," Patrick said bluntly. "But I am, so you can shut up and count yourself lucky."

Much to Patrick's surprise, Pete did. He shouldn't have let his guard down, though. Give Pete an inch and he'll take a mile, and joke about your penis size while he was at it.

Not that it was Patrick's dick that got the attention. Not exactly.

Pete had gotten them an interview with some college radio station, and against all odds, the interviewer appeared to be a fan. He asked, "Can you tell us something about you? Something personal, something that the audience won't know just from hearing your music."

"Well," Pete said. Patrick cringed - he had no idea what Pete was going to say, but he knew it was going to be awful. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but most bands on the scene are all betas. We’re a little unusual in that respect.”

“Really,” the interviewer said, sounding a lot more interested than Patrick thought the question warranted. “Which one of you?”

He still had time to force Pete to keep quiet. A kick - hell, even a well-timed glare might work. But then Pete would have to backtrack, and explain, and God knows he’d only find something worse to say. And anyway, Patrick wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed of what he was. It was just private, that’s all.

But Pete said, “Me, I’m an omega,” and everyone in the studio fell silent for three minutes before Joe burst out laughing. Andy and the interviewer joined him shortly.

Patrick didn’t laugh. He wasn’t in much of a laughing mood.

“Stop laughing,” Pete protested, chuckling a little himself. “I could be an omega!”

“You could not,” Andy said, firm.

Pete went serious all at once. “But I mean, I see people at shows, and they’re making fun of omegas, or saying they deserve,” he caught Patrick’s pained expression and quickly glossed, “whatever. And that’s shitty, and part of what I’m saying is, you can’t know. Maybe your best friend is an omega and he’s not telling you because you’re such a douchebag. People should take more care.”

“That I can agree with,” the interviewer said, and thankfully moved on to asking Pete about the lyrics.

~~

“You didn’t have to do that,” Patrick said on the way back from the interview, awkward.

Pete slung an arm across his shoulders. “Sure I did.” He tilted his head so his cheek was flush against Patrick’s hat. “You’re not the only one who cares, you know. You’re just in the best position to do something about it.”

 _Huh_ , Patrick thought. “That’s changing, though. We’re all gonna be in position to do more. A lot more.”

Pete grinned and pressed a kiss to the back of Patrick’s neck. “Fuck yeah. Now you’re hearing me.”


	2. Warped Tour, 2005

Patrick didn’t think watching bands from backstage could possible get old, but it was August and the combined heat of the evening and the stage lights was making him cranky. “I was going to write,” he complained to Pete.

Pete was busy staring at Mikey Way communing with his bass. “You can play with GarageBand later,” he said, distracted. “We’re living the rockstar life, now.”

If Patrick stayed here much longer he was going to melt through the stage. “Can’t the rock star life come with more air conditioning?”

Whatever Pete had said in reply was swallowed by the huge wave of applause from the audience. Seriously, the sound hit them like a physical object. Patrick actually staggered.

When he turned around to grab Pete, to steady himself, Pete wasn’t there. Patrick took a moment to shake himself up, to tell himself to get used to it.

Pete was all but climbing over Mikey Way as My Chem stumbled in. “Dude, you rocked,” Pete said, looking starstruck and more than a little horny.

The sad thing was, crankiness aside, Patrick completely agreed with this sentiment. But now if he echoed it he’d sound like an unenthusiastic douche. He settled for making his best attempt at a smile and hoping nobody paid him too much attention. That should be an easy thing to hope for.

Mikey sort of shrugged. “We were okay.”

“Accept a compliment, motherfucker,” Frank said, bouncing off Mikey. Mikey _oof_ ed, partially collapsing against Pete, and Frank chortled. He put his wrist to his forehead, speaking in high falsetto: “Oh, my omega sensitivities! Carry me, my big strong beta!”

“Frankie,” Gerard said, reproachful.

“What, you know it’s true!” Then Frank went away, presumably to antagonize someone else.

If Mikey minded, though, Patrick could see no signs of it. On the other hand, he wasn’t very good at reading Mikey Way: he didn’t have the most expressive face, and he usually smelled so strongly of old sweat and alcohol that Patrick couldn’t tell his emotional state at all, even though his nose had got a lot better at discerning nuance over time.

That didn’t seem to be a problem for Pete, who got Mikey on an instinctive level, to hear him say it. “We are soul mates, Patrick,” he’d said earlier, holding Patrick’s hand to impress on him the importance of this. “ _Soul mates_.”

Patrick should be happy for Pete. He probably would be, if he didn’t have the uncomfortable impression that Mikey’s opinion of Patrick was somewhere on the loathing spectrum and his opinion of Pete was bemused indifference. He was probably just projecting, uncomfortable with an omega he couldn’t figure out with a sniff, being the worst kind of alpha asshole.

Although. “Doesn’t it bug you?” Patrick wondered out loud, then kind of wanted to eat his words.

Too late. Mikey heard. “Doesn’t what bug me?”

Patrick squirmed. “The way Frank and Gerard. Uh.”

The spectacle Frank and Gerard made of themselves during shows put Pete's stage act to shame. Frank had a lot of use for his, as he called it, _baby omega voice_ , while Gerard would step behind him and intone about ownership and primordial instincts as he was pretending to hump Frank’s ass. Offstage, Gerard would then talk wide-eyed about pissing off the omegaphobic assholes in the audience, but it still made Patrick intensely uncomfortable. It didn't help that Frank was explicitly doing it because he thought it was funny, his _Omegaphobes are bitches_ shirt notwithstanding.

Mikey shrugged with one-shoulder. "It's just a joke. I know they're not talking about me."

To Patrick, it felt a little like they were talking about _him_ , or alphas in general. Still, this wasn't about him. He shut his mouth, grateful when Pete chimed in with vocal appreciation of Mikey's musicianship.

~~

Having an actual line of people, all waiting for Pete to sign their stuff, was kind of exhilarating. Supposedly the fans were here for the entire band, but, well. This was the third person who spent ten minutes raving at Pete with stars in her eyes while barely glancing at the rest of them.

Andy and Joe were playing some dumb game while waiting, a combination of thumb war and rock scissors paper. Patrick people-watched. Weird, how much the people standing in line looked like people who'd ignored him in random house parties two years ago. Maybe some of them were the actual same people.

Down the line, somebody raised their voice. A wisp of distressed omega scent flickered down to Patrick. He stood up without thinking, but hung back as he approached them. Maybe it was nothing.

Two guys were facing two girls. One of the girls was shying away, her scent practically screaming _help help help_. The other had one hand on her hip and a finger poking one of the guys in the chest. "Stop it!"

"What, it's what she's used to, isn't it?" One guy leaned close, visibly sniffing her. He didn't smell like alpha at all. "Yeah, I can tell, she's just waiting to give it up—"

"Ugh, _alphas_ ," said the pointy-finger girl. She smelled like a beta, too. Her friend just hunched down, closing in on herself, whispering, "Go away."

Saying, "She asked you to leave," felt cliche and stupid, but it was what Patrick had.

The guys turned to him. Probably they didn’t even recognize him, since he’d left his hat at the table. He was shorter than either of them. The sniffer smiled at him, ugly and condescending, probably about to say something Patrick didn’t want to listen to.

When Patrick said, "Leave," the second time, there was an actual growl in his voice. The crowd around them faded into a red haze at Patrick's peripheral vision. He'd punch the guys in the dick, to start, and then maybe tear their throats out with his teeth.

Even unable to smell him, the guys caught _something_ ; the non-sniffer looked at the other and mumbled. The sniffer gave a disdainful look and walked away. Patrick closed his eyes, breathed in, breathed out. When he opened his eyes again, people were staring. He backed away, all but running back to the signing table.

Andy was looking at him. "What," Patrick said, wary.

"Nothing." Then Andy smiled, and raised a fist to bump against Patrick's. Patrick bumped him with a small smile of his own.

The two girls' turn for autographs came about half an hour later. The beta didn't recognize him. The omega, though, stepped away while her friend was animatedly gesturing at Pete. She told Patrick, "Thank you," and slid a jewel case at him.

"Least I could do," Patrick said, honest. "Who do I make this out to?" He signed the jewel case, dedicating it to Cathy, as requested.

Cathy glanced at her friend, who was still focused on Pete. In a low voice, she said, "They don't get it. It's almost never alphas who are like that. Just betas who want an excuse to be gross."

"Everybody's got the potential to be gross, I guess." Patrick felt at a loss. "I mean, I try not to, but...."

"Yeah, take it from me: it's 90% betas. If you read about the porn industry—" she quieted abruptly, ears going red. "Sorry." 

"No, hey, it's fine," Patrick said, hurried. 

He offered her a hand to shake, feeling like a class A idiot, and even worse when she hunched again and said, "Maybe a hug?"

She was taller than him, so hugging her without getting his face anywhere inappropriate was a logistic challenge. Still, he wasn't sorry. She smelled much nicer now. 

When he sat back down, she looked at him from under her eyelashes, sweet and knowing. She dropped a piece of paper on the table and walked away, dragging her friend with her.

Joe caught sight of the paper. "Ooh, somebody's got a groupie!"

"Shut up," Patrick said, soft but sharp-edged. Joe froze for a moment. Then he backed off. Nobody mentioned it.

~~

Bus call was gonna be at dawn, two hours away. Inside the bus the air conditioning was dead. Outside, Patrick could just about stay cool if he climbed the roof of the bus and stayed there. 

It had some other benefits. On ground level, people were partying and yelling. Patrick enjoyed the relative quiet, staring up at the stars.

He heard a rustle and creaking noises, and turned his face just in time to catch Pete climbing up. "Hey."

"Hey yourself." Pete lay beside him, stretching out. 

They stayed like that for a while, neither speaking. Patrick could smell Pete if he tried, the baseline human essence of him. It was a familiar thing, calming in a way the scents of people he loved always were.

Pete was the one who broke the silence. "I've been writing." Patrick made an interested sound. "I'm not sure it'll work with our sound, though."

Patrick shrugged, feeling the metal of the bus against his shoulder. "We'll make it work." 

Pete was shifting, making small movements that meant discomfort. "I don't know. Like. I keep thinking about omegas and people being assholes, and I wanna talk about that, but also it's like, not my fight?"

"It could be," Patrick said. "If you wanted it to be."

"Not like that." Pete waved in the air like he was trying to disperse Patrick's argument. "Like, do I have the _right_ to talk about this stuff? I see what's happening to you and Mikey. But even that, like, it's just part of the time, you know? How much more is there that I'm not seeing?" He took a deep breath, then said all in one rush: "I wanna try looking like an omega."

That got Patrick to sit up. "What."

"Like, I don't know if pretending's the word. You remember that interview where I said I was one? What if I start saying that again?"

With exaggerated caution, Patrick said, "You know it's not just a matter of seeing, right?"

"The smell thing, yeah." Pete nodded, quick little bobs of his head. "There's ways to fake that, though, aren't there? We could tell people I was a late bloomer. I mean," he laughed, forced and brief, "I'm still dealing with the fucking pseudo-heats, so that's at least credible. And you could help me. Tell me when I'm, like, inauthentic."

Maybe three minutes passed while Patrick tried to parse this and pin down _why_ it sounded like such a terrible idea. He was about to admit that he couldn't, that maybe it wasn't such a weird thought, when Pete broke the silence with another forced laugh. 

"You know what," Pete said, "never mind, just me being stupid, let's never talk about that again." He stood up and walked back into the bus, leaving Patrick badly confused.

Knowing Pete worked almost as well as scent did, when he was with an omega. Probably that was what made Patrick feel like there was a phantom of a distress scent, hanging just at the edge of his perception.

~~

Pete avoided him for the next day, and the one after that. That night was hotel night, past the hour Pete usually made it back to the room, and still no word. Patrick was about to go look for him when there was a knock on the door.

Patrick wasn't expecting Mikey Way. "If you're looking for Pete, I haven't seen him."

"I have. He sent me here." Mikey was swaying. 

Patrick took a breath without thinking, choking on it when he realized a few things in quick succession:

1) For once, Mikey has showered recently and didn't stink of booze.

2) Therefore, Patrick could smell Mikey, who was in _heat_.

3) Beyond the heat, Mikey smelled abjectly miserable.

Scent didn't always translate well to words. Sometimes colors would work better as a direct association: Mikey's scent was blue and black and silver, spiraling, a veritable galaxy of pain hiding behind the red-pinks of heat. 

Before he thought better of it, Patrick had a hand on Mikey's shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Mikey's expression was flat as ever, as was his voice. "What do you think?" He smelled of need, strong enough that Patrick wasn't just aching in sympathy but in plain arousal. 

He shook his head, desperate for clarity. Mikey said Pete sent him here. _Right_. Patrick fished his phone out, thumb-typing a message, sending it to the first number on his quick-dial list.

Under his hand, Mikey twitched. "What are you doing?"

"Calling Pete over." Patrick squeezed his shoulder. He felt out of bounds, out of place, but he couldn't _not_ offer any comfort he could. "You shouldn't have to do this alone."

"You're here." The implied _are you stupid_ of his blank tone lacked its normal bite.

"Yeah, but. You trust Pete, don't you?" Enough to take his word on heat partners, apparently. "I mean, if you honestly prefer it to just be you and me, I could text him again to say never mind."

Mikey's jaw worked, but he stepped inside without another word.

In all the heats Patrick had attended before, the omega had initiated things. Which he guessed one could say Mikey had done, but Patrick had never had an omega standing in front of him like Patrick was going to shoot them. At a loss, he asked, "Do you want a drink?"

"Yeah," Mikey said, jaw twitching again. "Shouldn't, though."

Right. Mikey meant alcohol, because he wouldn't feel thirst while in heat. Of course. Patrick resisted the urge to bash his head against the wall. 

"I could go," Mikey said. His arms were crossed in front of him.

Patrick blinked. Mikey's scent shifted, the pain taking on an acrid edge of humiliation. _He thinks I'm rejecting him_ , Patrick realized. As though this were some twisted mirror universe where the likes of Patrick Stump scorned people who looked like Mikey Way. "Hey." He moved close enough to brush his hand against Mikey's. Then he offered Mikey his wrist. 

Mikey's hand was tentative as he took it, though his face remained impassive. He sniffed Patrick delicately, heat-scent growing stronger as he took in Patrick's smell. Patrick brought his free hand to rest on Mikey's neck, careful. Mikey bowed his head with a shudder.

It made something warm and yearning open up in Patrick's chest. He took Mikey's hand and led him to his bed. They ended up with Mikey on his back, shirtless, Patrick leaning over him on elbows and knees. That's how Pete found them when he opened the door.

"Get over here," Patrick told him, terse, and returned to nuzzling Mikey's stomach. Mikey was shuddering non-stop now, tossing his head over and over, sweat damping his skin. Patrick opened his fly, moved away to let Mikey kick off his skinny jeans.

Mikey made a tiny, miserable noise at the loss of contact, and Pete was next to him in a flash, kneeling on the bed and squeezing his hand. "Hey, dude," Pete cajoled, "it's just for a little bit. Come on." Then he helped Mikey remove his pants without anyone losing an eye. Patrick was reluctantly impressed. 

He shrugged off his own clothes while he was at it, ignoring the urge to shield himself from Pete's curious eyes. It wasn't anything Pete hasn't glimpsed at some point: they used to live together, for fuck's sake. Patrick still didn't waste any time crawling back to Mikey, though that wasn't just about modesty. Leaving Mikey empty, needing, for any longer than he had to - it just felt wrong.

The tip of Mikey's cock was gratifyingly wet, as was his hole. He was completely closed, though, so tightly shut that Patrick couldn't even wiggle a fingertip inside. 

"Just push through," Mikey said. "That's how it always is."

Patrick reared up, almost falling off the bed, and stared at Mikey in disbelief. After a moment, he decided this was the wrong time for a lecture, and settled for a grim, "I'm opening you up first," before getting back to business.

Mikey made some sort of protesting noise, but Pete said, "Dude, I know that tone, don't even try. We're here until you're open or the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first." Then Pete cracked up, because he wouldn't be Pete if he didn't laugh at his own jokes.

Pete's obnoxious laugh sent a flash of warmth through Patrick, though. He wasn't alone in this: the tightness in Mikey's abs loosened just a little bit. Good. Patrick rubbed his cheek against Mikey's inner thigh, taking in concentrated omega scent and fragile soft skin, let sensation wash over him as he kissed his way up Mikey's leg.

Mikey made soft, startled noises as Patrick licked into him - or tried to, rather, gentle tongue-tip touches to where Mikey was all clenched up, broad laps around his rim. The taste of him was heady with heat, his scent affecting Patrick like hits from a joint, to the point where Patrick had to grab himself to ease the ache of how much he wanted _in_.

Slowly, slowly the muscles relaxed, letting Patrick make progress, but Mikey still wasn't _open_ , not the way Patrick needed him to be. "I'm telling you." Mikey's voice was half-sob now. "This is just how it is, I don't _do_ more than this."

Patrick paused. "You're not enjoying this?"

Mikey squirmed. Pete said, "No, he is, he's just self-conscious." Mikey's scent didn't indicate disagreement. Nothing about him did. 

Patrick nodded, satisfied. "Keep him quiet," he told Pete, and went back to what he was doing. 

After a while longer, Mikey was just loose enough for Patrick to get a finger inside him. Not all the way, but it didn't need to go that far. Just enough to reach—

"Ah!" Mikey bucked up.

Yep. That was it. Patrick smirked, stimulating Mikey from inside even as he kept licking at his rim. His own cock throbbed, hurting, but that didn't merit attention, not yet. Mikey's scent was powerful need, growing by the second as Patrick got him more and more aroused. He needed to do something about it, but he couldn't make Mikey come like this - not yet - and didn't want to divide his attention.

He withdrew a little. A thin line of saliva connected him to Mikey still, then snapped. "Pete. Suck him off." He didn't bother to check that Pete was doing what he was told before diving back.

Patrick kept licking Mikey's rim as he came, the same careful attention he gave him at the beginning. Orgasm smelled good on Mikey. Probably looked good, too. Maybe later Patrick would get to see for himself. Now, he had to keep going, ignore the ache in his jaw, work Mikey's body into surrender.

When it arrived, it was pretty dramatic - Mikey clenched all over, so hard that he would have dislocated Patrick's finger if he'd left it inside him, then relaxed, profoundly, all over. Patrick let out a long breath, rested his head on Mikey's thigh for a second, then climbed up.

Just before entering, he paused. Bowed to sniff Mikey's neck. Impossibly, the pain was still there, a hard black background to heat and Mikey's current mellow feeling. It made smelling other things hard. "Mikey? You on the pill?" Mikey just managed to shake his head. Patrick sighed. "Pete?"

But Pete was handing him a condom before Patrick even finished saying his name. Patrick flashed him a grateful smile and rolled it on. He spread Mikey's legs, pausing when the stretch started looking uncomfortable. Mikey rolled his eyes and shifted them further, as pliable as taffy.

The first thrust knocked a helpless little, "Oh," out of Patrick, and the next one did it again. He couldn't stop himself from making noise, Mikey was just so, so tight and open at the same time, wary but welcoming even so; Patrick tried to thank him with the movement of his hips, did his best to angle himself so every push would make it better for Mikey, nuzzling his nipples and letting his soft cock rub up against Patrick's belly.

It didn't stay soft for long.

Mikey's fingers were pressing bruises into Patrick's shoulders, his slim long legs wrapped around Patrick's lower back, eyes closed. He arched up under him, his rim catching at the base of Patrick's cock, and that was it. He was knotting.

The sensation of it knocked Mikey's eyes wide open, his jaw dropping to match. "Fuck," he panted out. "Fuck." When Patrick tried to stop, though, Mikey clamped his hands and legs tighter yet, holding Patrick in place. He whispered, "Give it to me," in Patrick's ears, each word bitten out and lethal. Patrick made a completely undignified noise and did, letting himself go, filling Mikey up. 

Underneath him, Mikey was still hard. Patrick was trying to decide what to do about that, fuzzy and stupid with orgasm, when he felt Pete's hand moving between them. Bracing himself up to give Pete room took effort, but not thought, so Patrick could do that. He watched Mikey's face that time, the grimace it twisted into as he came around Patrick's knot, the delicious clench milking another spurt out of Patrick.

There was a brief silence. Then Pete's rusty voice saying, "I'll just."

Looking up at Pete was like being struck. Patrick’s dick was still sluggishly spasming and dripping inside Mikey, but the desperate, naked _want_ on Pete’s face made him work his hips and let out another small torrent of come, it felt like. 

Not to mention the plainly visible, painful-looking tent in his jeans. Patrick tried to say something, but his mouth wouldn’t obey.

"Don't be an idiot." Mikey sounded basically the same as always less than a minute after coming. That was just weird. He also didn’t have any problem operating buttons or zippers, because there was Pete's dick, getting desultorily jerked off by Mikey.

That, too, felt wrong. Pete helped. Pete deserved better. Patrick managed to find some words. "Move over here," he said, and got his mouth around Pete's cock.

Pete lasted barely a few second. That was a pity, Patrick vaguely thought. He hadn't had a lot of sex with betas - or any, to be honest - and it could've been interesting. On the other hand, probably it was better like that: the last thing he and Pete needed was to drag Patrick's awkward teen crush on him into the light. This was quick and mostly about Mikey, anyway. Easily ignored. Patrick swallowed the evidence, and it was like it never happened at all.

Soon after that, Pete left, probably to get cleaned up. Patrick made himself as comfortable as he could and waited for the knot to subside. The scent of heat faded slowly around them, giving room to their baseline scents.

Which for Mikey, meant so much pain that Patrick could half feel it, like a migraine or walking on a sprained ankle. "What's wrong?"

Mikey blinked. "Nothing. I'm good now." Another blink. "Uh. Thanks?"

Patrick waved that off, possibly blushing a bit. "What's hurting you so much?"

This time, when Mikey blinked, his eyes were a little too bright. "I don't know what you're talking about." The words were honest, but a lie, too. 

If Patrick let himself lie down, which he did now, his head rested right over Mikey's solar plexus. He laid his hand down, palm open, feeling the beat of Mikey's heart. "I don't know what it is, I can just tell it's there. If I can do anything to help, _anything_ ," Patrick pressed down with his hand, not hard, just a little, "let me know? Please?"

In a low voice, Mikey said, "I don't think anyone can." Patrick felt fingers in his hair, feather-light. "It's just, I don't know. It's there. It always was. Isn't that just how life is?"

Great. Now Patrick's eyes were stinging, too. "It's not." He wasn't just thinking about Mikey, now. That was the worst part. He kept thinking about touring England while Pete was in a hospital bed, Pete with a heart full of hurt that Patrick couldn't even smell. "It doesn't have to be like this, Mikey, it _doesn't_."

"Ugh," Mikey said after a short pause. "Now you sound like my brother, don't _do_ that while I'm naked."

Patrick choked on a hysteric little giggle. "Sorry?"

"You should be." His fingers resumed petting, though. "Look, I'd ask if I knew what I wanted. But thanks, I guess."

No reply seemed appropriate. "I think I can pull out now," Patrick offered, instead. That was accepted pretty well.

~~

It said something about Patrick's distraction that he didn't notice that someone was approaching until he heard a growled, "Stump," coming from behind him.

That was Bob's voice. Patrick turned, confused. He liked Bob well enough, and couldn't think of anything he'd done that could piss him off. "Something wrong?" He turned around.

From Bob's expression, he wasn't just pissed. He was _furious_. "Stay the fuck away from Mikey."

Patrick's eyebrows rose. "Mikey can tell me to fuck off himself, if he wants to," he answered with a mildness he didn't feel. Pete had been avoiding Patrick even more assiduously since the whole heat thing, leaving a lingering unease that was just looking for an excuse to express itself by punching someone.

Bob's hands curled into fists. "I thought you're a good person, Stump. Not the kind of guy who'd take advantage of a friend in heat."

For a moment Patrick froze. Could he have misread— didn't Mikey want to? But as he went over his memory of the heat, Patrick couldn't see anything but clear agreement from Mikey. "Heat doesn't make people into, into _children_. It's not like he was drugged. He came to me because he wanted help—"

"He doesn't need your help." A vein was standing out in Bob's neck, and he was outright shouting his next words. "He doesn't need a goddamned thing from you, he has people who'll take care of him."

Patrick's eyes narrowed. "People like you?"

_Oh_ , Bob didn't like that. "Fuck you." His face was turning purple. "I've got what he needs, okay? You don't have to be an alpha to knot, for your fucking information."

Patrick's voice went very quiet, almost a whisper, eyes focused on Bob. "What he needed," he said, enunciating every word clearly, "is _patience_. Which I'm guessing isn't something he saw in a lot of partners, since he clearly expected me to hurt him." Distantly, he was aware this was a bad idea. Bob was taller than him, outweighed him, almost certainly had more experience brawling than Patrick. But Patrick couldn't bring himself to back down, to pacify him. " _Someone_ taught him he shouldn't expect his partners to wait until he's ready instead of just shoving their knot in—"

With an incoherent noise, Bob charged him. Patrick stood his ground, waiting, flinching when the blow he expected didn't come.

"What the hell are you doing?" Ray was holding Bob back, the muscles in his arms bulging. "Dude, calm the fuck down!"

"He said," Bob snarled, "he said I— Mikey—"

Ray waited until Bob seemed unlikely to attack and let go. He still stood between him and Patrick when he asked, "Okay, what did you say about Mikey?"

"That Mikey's a grown guy who can make his own decisions," Patrick said, spite making him add, "and if he weren't, it’s not up to Bob to make them for him."

Bob took a step forward, but Ray's arm held him back easily. "He's got a point," Ray said, addressing Bob. "No, _think_ , he always looked so down after heats, I just thought he hated having them at all. But he was happy as a clam last night."

Bob's fingers kept curling and uncurling, like he wanted to fight but wasn't sure about fighting _Ray_. "How the fuck would you know," he muttered. "He's got the same expression he always has."

"If you can’t tell, maybe you shouldn't be having sex with him," Patrick interjected, just as Ray said, "I can smell him."

Patrick stared at him. "You don't smell like an alpha."

“Eh.” Ray shrugged. "I can smell people, Bob," he grimaced, "you heard what Bob can do, shit's complicated. And maybe Mikey should have said something instead of waiting for Bob to magically grow a better nose, I don't know." He grabbed Bob's neck and shook gently, then extended a hand to Patrick. "Look, let's agree that we all care about Mikey and if he wants us to fight for his honor, he can fucking tell us, okay?"

Patrick reluctantly shook Ray's hand, then Bob's, when he extended it. "I don't get it," he told Bob. "You never did anything like this to Pete."

Bob shrugged one shoulder and mumbled something.

"And now," Ray said, very firmly, "I think you two should have a beer together and beat each other on Halo like civilized people."

~~

"'S'different," Bob said, three beers in.

Patrick mashed buttons in a last-ditch attempt to keep his guy from being killed. "What is?"

"You," Bob gestured vaguely, "with Mikey. Not the same as Pete."

Onscreen, Patrick's guy died an awful, messy death. Patrick put the controller down. "Yeah," he said, with exaggerated slowness. "Pete's actually dating him, whereas I was just helping him out."

"Oh please." Bob snorted. "Like it was charity?"

Patrick blushed. "Okay, not charity. But like. It was one evening. Pete's been orbiting him for the entire tour. So I do think it's different, I just don't get why you'd mind me more."

Bob stared at the flashing "Respawn?" on the screen. At length he said, "It's just not fair."

At a loss, Patrick kept quiet and waited for more.

"You could have any omega you wanted," Bob said. "And. Maybe I wasn't doing much good, but I was better than nothing, right? He wouldn't have kept coming to me otherwise." He took a gulp from his beer and swallowed. "I wouldn't have hurt him on purpose. I didn't know." His voice was very quiet on those last three words.

"I didn't think you meant to," Patrick offered. He had no idea what to do with the rest of that. Except, "And like hell I can have any omega I want. Omegas date who they want, nobody said it has to be an alpha."

"Even us beta chumps have a shot." The corner of Bob's mouth rolled up. "Except for during heats."

Patrick blinked at him. "Okay, you remember pseudo-heats, right? It's not that different. Nobody ever died of sexual frustration. I mean, it's shitty, but not bad enough you'd fuck someone if you couldn't stand them."

"So what, nobody heat-cheats?" Bob gave Patrick a skeptical glance.

Patrick snorted. "So what? People also cheat-cheat." He made grabby hands at the beer case. Bob handed him another bottle. "I don't know, I definitely get laid less than Pete. I'm okay with that," he added, "Pete's got enough drama to go around, you know?"

Bob looked at him for a long moment, expression even. Then he sighed. "Still, at least you get to know you're a real alpha. Not, like, fake imitation wannabe."

There was something niggling at the corner of Patrick's memory. How did it go? "Most vital is your own sense of identity," right.

Bob was openly staring at him now. He must have said that out loud. Patrick giggled, messing with his hat and accidentally pouring beer all over himself.

~~

He sobered up pretty quickly on the way back to the bus. The sun had set since, bringing welcome relief from summer even with heat radiating off the cooling busses. They weren't playing tonight, and Patrick considered checking out one of the other shows before deciding he didn't feel like anything other than hiding in his bunk and not talking to anyone else for the night.

Just outside the bus, Andy caught up with him. "You don't wanna go in there." His expression was grim. "Pete is... very Pete. Don't get in the blast radius."

Patrick sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Just his luck. He needed to talk to Pete badly, but doing that when he was already freaking would only make everything worse. Maybe it'd be better in the morning. He looked up at the bus, forlorn, and bid his vision of a quiet night in goodbye.

For now, he did the next best thing, joining Andy and Joe where they sat bullshitting with a couple of the techs. They knew him well enough to leave him be, and sitting with them meant nobody else would approach him unless they wanted something specific. Patrick let himself space out, thinking of nothing in particular.

His concentration broke, and he frowned, trying to figure out why. A sudden change of scent - one of the techs, an alpha named Josh, smelled of sour displeasure. 

"So there he is," said the other tech, Shawn, "as useless as an omega without a cunt, and I—"

"What?" Patrick said.

Shawn gave him a friendly smile. "Oh, hi, nice of you to join us. I was telling them about this new roadie, I'm telling you, useless—"

"As an omega without a cunt," Patrick said, the words bitter on his tongue. "How useless is that, exactly?"

Shawn looked taken aback. "C'mon, dude, it's a joke."

Patrick crossed his arms. "I'm not getting it. You wanna explain?"

"Shawn," Josh muttered, "quit it."

Shawn turned betrayed eyes on him. "Quit what? He's the one being a pansy. What, are you an omega?" He leered at Patrick, then turned a doubting look at Josh, asking, "Wait, is he?"

"No." Josh looked like a turtle who wanted his shell back.

"How would you even know," Patrick snapped at him. "Yeah, I know what I smell like, so fucking what? This stuff is so, so _complicated_ , you have people who'll smell you when they don't smell like anything, you have betas who knot - omegas who don't go into heat, for all I know -" 

Shawn sniggered, and Patrick started getting up, unsure what he was going to do but with the grim impression it wasn't going to be pretty.

Joe grabbed his sleeve. "Hey, whoa, break it up. C'mon, what does that even mean? I mean, what if you had somebody tell you they can't scent or go into heat or," he made a vaguely obscene gesture, "but they're still an alpha, what would you do?"

Patrick paused. He scratched the back of his head. "I guess I'd say okay," he said. "I mean, they'd know better than me, right?"

"But then what does being an alpha mean?" Andy said, and before Patrick could think of an answer to _that_ , something landed on the top of his head.

It was a shoe. A very familiar shoe. Patrick looked upwards, to where a red-faced Pete leaned out of the bus window and hoarsely shouted, "Fuck you!"

The second shoe, Patrick dodged. Pete closed the window with a bang. Alright. That was enough. Patrick stalked grimly up the steps to the bus, ignoring the comments the others had to offer.

~~

"Okay, what?" Patrick snapped. His tone was softer than he intended, though: Pete was huddled up under a mass of blankets, looking severely sorry for himself.

Pete snapped right back, "Don't you _what_ me, asshole. Now you're playing the knight in shining armor, when nobody even wanted you to defend them, but when I poured my fucking heart out to you you stonewalled me."

In some distant universe, Patrick felt, that sentence made sense. Or possibly that was just inside Pete's head. "When you _what_?"

"Don't play innocent." Pete slumped, though, the viciousness in his voice faded to petulance. "I mean, maybe I didn't spell it out for you with little words, but you understood. I know you did."

Patrick opened his mouth to deny this, and shut it. Facts in his mind clicked together, bits and pieces he hadn't realized he was ignoring on purpose. 

The last one he hadn't even let himself _see_ , at the time: Pete's face, during the heat session with Mikey. The incongruous desperate longing that didn't make sense, since he could have Mikey whenever. Since he could have anything he wanted from Patrick, anything at all that he could give.

Some things he couldn't. "Do you still want that?" Patrick asked, subdued. "The fake scent, that stuff."

Pete sat up, back a little too straight. "No. Fuck that. I am what I am. People can draw their own fucking conclusions, for once." 

The change in position moved the blankets around a bit, enough for Patrick to spot a familiar ice pack. "Are you in heat?" Patrick asked, dumbly.

Pete's face clouded. "Because I can't be angry if I'm not—" Patrick pointed at the ice pack. "Oh. I'm not sorry I said that, though." His mouth curved a mutinous line.

Fair enough. Patrick heard people say that to Pete and mean it. He grimaced. "Yeah, my timing was shitty."

"Talk about shitty timing, I think I fucking synched up with Mikey." Pete lay back with a thump. He glared at Patrick's hastily suppressed giggle. "Fuck you. Have some fucking sympathy, just because I'm not omega enough for your precious knot—"

"Wait, _what_?!" Patrick said, incredulous.

The tips of Pete's ears were turning pink. _It's a good look on him_ , Patrick thought, helpless. Pete's tone turned biting again, though, as he said, "I'm sorry, was my request for your knot not clear enough the first three hundred times I made it? Did you want me to file a request in triplicate, maybe go to my knees and beg?"

Patrick made a strangled noise.

"Eh, whatever." Pete turned his face away, but Patrick could read bitterness in the line of his shoulder, as clear as any omega he'd ever scented. "I get it, I'm too fucked up, I don't smell right...."

"No!" He sounded desperate, enough so to make Pete shut up and listen. "No. You've got it exactly backwards." He swallowed. "Look, I have a story to tell you, but it's _really embarrassing_ , so I'll appreciate it if you let me go all the way through it before you say anything, okay?"

~~

"You're kidding me." Pete's eyebrows were raised, teeth exposed in a shit-eating grin. 

Patrick buried his face between his hands. He couldn't say he expected a different reaction to the tale of exactly _how_ his first heat had come to pass, but it was still kind of painful to experience.

A hand touched his knee. "Hey, dude, c'mon. Look at me."

Cautiously, Patrick lowered his hands.

Pete was still smiling, but it'd gone gentle, the shining joyous expression he got sometimes when he was looking at Patrick singing. "I am actually touched, dude, you know that?" The words sounded like they should be sarcastic. Pete's tone was anything but. "I helped you come to, like, a self-revelation. I'm fucking honored." His smile took on a mischievous edge. "Also, turnabout is fair play."

Patrick was sick of the sound of the word _what_ , so he just made an inarticulate noise in request for elaboration.

Pete fidgeted, glancing away. "I might've not have known I wasn't kidding when I told you about the fake-scent idea."

"Really." Patrick crossed his arms. "So when did you figure that out?"

Pete's fingers made their way from Patrick's knee to his wrist, still so weirdly gentle. "When I was looking at Mikey under you and realizing that I didn't just want him, I wanted to _be_ him. Position and all."

The memory replayed itself in Patrick's mind, only now he was thinking about what Pete said, about Pete looking up at him, Pete _claimed_ by him, and his brain shorted out a tiny bit. He wobbled off-balance, ending up with his face nestled against the crook of Pete's shoulder. A familiar place to be. Patrick closed his eye and breathed deep.

"Yeah, still no heat scent," Pete said. His hand stole up to play with Patrick's hair, knocking off his hat in the process. "Sorry."

"Don't be." Patrick didn't need to open his eyes to know that Pete was pleased if wary, still scared of all the things that could go wrong. So was Patrick, if he was honest with himself. "You smell like you. That's better."

Of course Pete had to be an asshole about it and argue, "But if I could I'd still smell like me, only in _heat_ ," so Patrick had no choice but to shut him up by kissing him.

At first Pete froze, but then his hands came up to Patrick's face. His touch started out tentative. Then Patrick bit on his bottom lip, gently, and Pete was grabbing on for dear life.

One limb at a time, Patrick squirmed into the bunk on top of Pete. A vague thought of propriety passed through Patrick's head. "On the bus, though?"

Pete snorted. "Joe and Andy already know to stay away tonight. Let's not make their sacrifice in vain."

With that out of the way, nothing was stopping Patrick from fully climbing on top of Pete. That was familiar, too, even the ice pack in the way: curling together for comfort, the way they always had.

This was more than comfort, though. It shook Patrick to realize that he might be able to offer Pete a _solution_. He kissed him again, feeling unreal, like they were in a bubble minutes away from popping. Pete tasted like Doritos and sleep. His skin, when Patrick broke away to nuzzle and bite his jaw, tasted like sweat. It jarred another memory, and Patrick groaned and ground his dick against Pete's thigh when he remembered: _That's what his cock tasted like._

Pete ground right back, fumbling with his pants, knocking the ice pack out of the way. Patrick withdrew a little bit to undress himself, hitting his head on the bottom of the top bunk without even noticing. Lucky that they were both travel-sized. This would've been impossible otherwise.

Then they were both naked. Patrick closed his eyes at the feeling of naked skin contact, appreciating this in a way he never let himself think of Pete while they cuddled. That had felt dangerous - _he’d_ felt dangerous, a risk to Pete.

It made him want to be honest. “I don’t wanna hurt you,” he told Pete.

“Yeah, I’ll remember that next time you punch me.”

In Patrick’s favor, none of the times he punched Pete were unwarranted, and it wasn’t like Pete had ever refrained from punching back. “Not like that, asshole.” He blushed. There was no way around it. “Do you, like…?”

“Like what?” Pete blinked at him with fake innocence. The asshole, he knew exactly what Patrick was talking about. He just wanted to watch him squirm. “No, ‘Trick, help me out, here.” 

“Do you get wet,” Patrick blurted, feeling all the blood not currently divested into his cock rushing to his face.

“No,” Pete said, eyes searching Patrick’s face. “I have lube, though.” He handed Patrick a little tube. “But yeah, I’m not going to open up like Mikey did. My body really just doesn’t do that. I tried.” 

It hurt in multiple ways to think about that, the image both mind-burningly hot and somehow sad. Patrick choked out, “So we can’t…?”

“Knot? No, we can’t.” Pete was grinning, though, lewdly. “Fuck? Hell yeah. _Please_.” 

Just like that, all the urgency Patrick had carefully put away came rushing back, his cock throbbing insistently. Patrick grabbed himself around the base, his cock twitching at Pete’s avid stare . 

“Fuck,” Pete said, thickly, “can I,” and then he scooted down while urging Patrick up until he was straddling Pete’s chest, head carefully low, the tip of his dick just resting on Pete’s lips. 

Then Pete’s mouth opened, taking him in, and that was as much thinking as Patrick could do just then.

He let it go on until he could hardly bear it. “Pete, I need—” He was far from coherent, but Pete got him anyway, sucking harder, lips just bumping the edge of Patrick’s firming knot. Patrick took it in hand, gripping himself good and tight. “I don’t want to waste it.” He felt like he was begging, but he wasn’t sure who he was begging, or what for: for Pete to let him come, or for his own body to let him last.

Pete’s hand was on his thigh, warm. Patrick screwed his eyes shut and clamped down _hard_ on his knot, letting his come rush into Pete’s mouth. He opened his eyes to see it overfilling, spilling down Pete’s cheeks in rivulets, looking away because it was too much, made him hurt because he couldn’t come hard enough to properly appreciate that sight.

His knot was tender afterwards. Patrick covered it with one hand as he got out of the bunk and told Pete to turn over, kept the same hand tucked between his knot and the sheets as he leaned on his other elbow and spread Pete’s ass open with his fingers.

Maybe he wouldn’t be able to open Pete all the way using his mouth, but it was worth a shot anyway. 

Patrick was already intimately familiar with Pete’s sex noises. After all, they had lived in close quarters for years, on and off. They were something else entirely when Patrick knew he was the one causing them.

After a while, though, the noises resolved into words. “You couldn’t hurt me,” Pete gasped, “not if you tried, not on your life, Stump. Give me your fucking worst, okay?” And he cracked up: “But not your worst fucking.” Fucking typical Wentz, laughing at his own puns during sex. “Or yeah, give me that.” Pete’s tone went deeper at the words. “Give me the nastiest, hardest fuck you can, yeah, I can chew it and spit it out.” Then he whined, because Patrick pulled away.

“Don’t say stuff like that after you just had my dick in your mouth,” Patrick said mildly. “That’s sensitive equipment.”

“I’ll show you fucking sensitive—” the rest was lost in a groan as Patrick resumed eating Pete out.

It was different than he was used to. Pete didn’t get wet, so there was nothing but Patrick’s own saliva to ease the way. He didn’t open up the way Patrick knew, either, though the muscles _were_ giving way by tiny increments. Soon it was enough for Patrick to finger him, upon which Pete reminded him to “Use the fucking lube, dude, it’s not gonna slick itself.” He bit Pete’s ass for that, as both thanks and punishment. Also because it felt good, the pressure against his jaw making his dick firm up again.

The lube did help. Pretty soon Pete was fucking back on Patrick’s fingers, making ecstatic little sounds. “Oh yeah. Oh fuck, just like that. Just what I need.”

Patrick squirmed between Pete and the wall, watching Pete’s face. “I’ll give you what you need,” he murmured, and bit Pete’s neck. That worked gratifyingly well: Pete yelped and bucked and shuddered, finally slumping. “Wait,” Patrick said, “did you just come?”

“Yup.” Pete sounded extremely smug and satisfied. “Now get your dick in me before I start thinking again.”

That sounded like solid advice. He climbed over Pete, pausing, trying to remember - if Pete had heats but didn’t get wet, did that mean he could or couldn’t get pregnant?

Reading his mind, Pete said, “Just use a condom anyway, trust me,” and wiggled to the side, fishing his duffel bag from under the bunk and awkwardly passing it to Patrick.

It was a beta condom, so Patrick only rolled it halfway up, careful of catching his knot in it and ripping the whole thing. He held it in place with thumb and forefinger, the rest of his hand cradling his knot, and guided himself inside Pete that way.

Pete was tighter than anything he’d ever felt, so tight it _hurt_ , and Patrick made an involuntary noise. Pete wasn’t doing much better, groaning, “Fuck, you’re _thick_ , gimme your cock,” which should have sounded corny and stupid but was just hot. “Seriously, _give_ it to me, did you think I was kidding, did you think I’ll _break_ —”

Something in Patrick snapped, and he bowed down to whisper, “Fuck you, I’ll fill you up till you burst, get you so tight around my knot I’ll make you _cry_.”

Pete’s breath hitched. For a moment Patrick worried that he went too far, that he _did_ make Pete cry, but then Pete _rippled_ around him, a strangling grip around his cock, and abruptly relaxed.

“Oh wow,” Patrick said, kinda dumb with awe and the sheer need to come himself.

“I think you can put it in now,” Pete said.

It took Patrick a moment to parse that. “What? No way.” His cock ached at the thought, though, his _knot_ did, thinking of an omega hole so close and so willing. _Not willing_ , Patrick thought firmly. “You’re way too tight.”

Sometimes Pete could be stubborn, though, and this was looking like one of those times. “I can take it. I’ve never been this relaxed in my _life_ , and if people can stuff two fists in there—”

“Wait, they can?” Patrick was never looking at Pete’s porn.

“They can,” Pete said with authority. “And I can take your knot. Come on.” His tone shifted from wheedling to sultry. “I’ll be so good for you, Patrick, I’ll take you so sweet….”

Saying no to Pete was never one of Patrick’s skills, even when he really should have. With a groan that was half arousal and half exasperation, Patrick inched deeper inside, ready to turn back at the first clue this wasn’t working.

Pete really was relaxed, though, almost as giving as other omegas Patrick had been with. It was a struggle to get the knot inside, but it never felt futile, never like it was _hurting_ Pete. Ironically, it became even easier when Patrick thought to growl, “You’ll take me in whether you want to or not.”

That made Pete gasp and rear back, and with a _pop!_ Patrick’s knot slipped inside him. It was only half-swelled, and the pressure inside Pete was incredible, too strong for him to go to full size and hot enough that it didn’t matter. Patrick made a whining noise deep in his throat, eyes rolling back as he clutched Pete tight and came and came and came.

When he was conscious enough again to hurriedly reach for Pete’s dick, he found it wet and soft. He kept his hand there anyway, liking the contact. “So that was okay?” Patrick said, tentative.

“That was fucking incredible.” Pete nudged him and they managed to both turn on their sides. Pete’s head was pillowed on one of Patrick’s arms, the other resting over Pete’s hip and his dick. Patrick nuzzled the back of his neck, feeling happiness bubble up through him.

Patrick was almost asleep when Pete said, “You realize you’re never getting rid of me, right? If you ever try to walk away I’ll follow you like a puppy and bark outside your window until you come out.”

“And that’s different from before how?” Patrick’s eyes were falling shut.

Pete shifted in his arms, not trying to get away, just feeling the boundaries. “Well. You’ll get more orgasms now?” 

“Yay me,” Patrick mumbled, or tried to, falling asleep against Pete’s sweaty back.


	3. LA, 2006

It’s amazing how little time Patrick had alone with Pete, given that they spent nearly every damn minute of the day in the same room. On the other hand, they were working: so it was hours on end in the studio, eating takeout between laying tracks, and by the time they were home, both of them were too exhausted to do anything.

Today they ended early, which lit a bright spark of hope in Patrick’s chest, among other body parts. “Hey,” he said, closing the door and pinning Pete to it, nuzzling under his ear.

Pete’s hand grabbed his ass, bringing them together. “Hey, yourself.”

They were in the middle of a very nice kiss when the phone rang. Worst of all, Patrick couldn’t even complain, since the phone was playing _Urge for Going_ , which meant it was Mikey. Pete answered right away, wandering towards the bedroom. Patrick sighed, went to the living room and pulled his laptop out. No use wasting time.

There were a half dozen google alerts, which Patrick checked for two second before grimacing and making a mental note to murder Pete slowly for using Patrick’s computer despite being emphatically forbidden to. It wasn’t like Pete didn’t have his own. He was just marking his territory, which was fucking stupid after being together for this long and also left mentally scarring things in Patrick’s browser history.

The actual alert results didn’t improve his mood any. There was another opinion article about whether Pete actually was omega or only said it for shock value and/or audience sympathy. Patrick pressed the back button three words in. It was three words too many.

Just as Patrick got the article out of his mind, Pete walked back into the room, still on the phone. “Yeah, he’s here. Hold on.” He passed the phone to Patrick.

Patrick took it, bemused. “Hello?” He and Mikey were friendly enough, but they didn’t really talk.

“Hi,” said somebody on the other end. It wasn’t Mikey, though. It was Ray. 

“Hi,” Patrick parroted back. “How are you doing?”

There was a considering silence on the other end. “As well as could be,” Ray said. “You’re not looking for another drumming gig, by any chance?”

“Uh, no, booked solid. Sorry.” Then Patrick’s brain caught up with the rest of the sentence. “Is Bob okay?”

“I guess he should be.” There was definitely tension in Ray’s voice. “I wouldn’t know, since we hadn’t heard from him in a week.”

Patrick blinked. “Crap. I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.” Then, out of nowhere, Ray laughed. “Except it is, a little bit. Listen, I caught your interview the other day. On Steven’s show.”

Patrick tried to remember anything that might interest Ray about that show, coming up with a blank. “Uh, great?”

Across the line, Ray sucked in a breath. “I wanted to thank you,” he said, soft-voiced. “It’s just, something you said. It helped me put together some stuff that I couldn’t make fit for a long time.”

What _had_ they talked about? The new album, but they haven’t said anything outside the ordinary about that. Andy got in a few lines about animal rights. And Pete got the usual awful questions about his dick pic, although Steven was at least apologetic about those, and more sympathetic than a lot of other interviewers had been. Patrick had stepped in, as a distraction and because Steven was quoting some unfair fucking assumptions.

_Right._ Patrick blinked. “Uh, I was thinking about you, actually. Among others.” 

~~

Once Patrick got it into his head that alpha, beta or omega wasn’t as simple as filling out a checklist, more people like that started popping out of the woodwork. Or maybe they’d been there all along and he’d just started noticing. 

A fan who had Pete sign CD liner notes had told them, “That made me figure out I was really an omega. I mean, maybe that’s not how you meant them, but—”

“No,” Pete had said, eyes shining. “I totally did.”

And with all those fans popping up, hearing somebody Patrick actually _liked_ say stuff like, “But you have to have a bunch of characteristics to be an omega, right? Just saying you are can’t be enough,” made something in Patrick snap.

He’d been ranting before he’d realized the words were out of his mouth: “No, you _don’t_ have to, because it’s not that simple. I’ve known people who felt like something was broken with them because they know they’re not betas but they don’t match this, this stupid picture of what omegas or alphas are. I mean, even with the whole biological thing I _was_ that kid, I was short and geeky and if I told people I was an alpha, they’d laugh at me. It’s so much worse when it’s not clear, when you have some of the marks and not others and you just don’t feel like you fit anywhere. Nobody deserves that.”

Steven had blinked at him. “You’re an alpha?” Then his face had cleared, and he’d answered his own question. “Wow, I guess you are.”

~~

The dots connected, and Patrick found himself echoing that interview. “You’re an alpha?”

Ray huffed a quiet little laugh. “Yeah, I am.” He sounded nothing short of amazed by that, shy and proud at the same time. Patrick kind of wished they were in the same room so he could offer Ray a hug.

“I’m really glad to hear that, man,” Patrick said, sincere. Then he backtracked: “I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with being a beta!”

“Or an omega,” Ray said. “I notice you didn’t ask if I was one.”

So Patrick hadn’t. It was just— once Patrick got over the fact that Ray didn’t smell like alpha, he realized that Ray behaved like one, strength radiating from him even as he tried to make himself look smaller. “Still. Good for you.” His mind kept whirring. “Does this have something to do with why Bob left?”

“Bob,” Ray said, “needs to sort his own shit out.” He sounded tired. “So if you come across anyone likely, point them our way, yeah?”

“Sure thing.” Even as he said it, Patrick was running through his mental list of drummers he knew, discarding those who wouldn’t be right - busy, not My Chem’s style, too much of an asshole. A few he marked as possible _maybes_ , and made a mental note to call them later. “And how’s Mikey?”

“Mikey’s good.” There was confidence in that statement, and more of that shy pride. “Really good.”

They concluded the conversation with that, and Patrick hung up. He looked up at Pete. “So, correct me if I’m wrong, but did My Chem’s drummer quit because he had a fight with their guitarist over their bassist?” 

“I can neither confirm or deny,” Pete said, falling into the couch next to Patrick. “But yeah, totally.” 

“Damn.” Patrick couldn’t find it in himself to feel sorry about it. He squeezed Pete’s hand. “At least that’s not going to happen with us.”

Pete made a mock-injured face. “Are you saying Joe wouldn’t kick Andy’s ass for my honor?”

“Pete, it’s Andy,” Patrick said. “He could kick all our asses and still do his workout without breaking a sweat.” 

“True.” He kissed Patrick’s cheek. “You’d totally defend my honor if I had any.” 

Patrick drew him into a real kiss, shoving his laptop away with one foot. He’d delete the google alarms in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> The reference to Pete's suicide attempt is short and oblique - it's only mentioned in passing. The attempted sexual assault is done to an OC by another OC and is foiled very quickly.
> 
> If you want more elaborations, of come across something you think should be tagged, please don't hesitate to contact me! I'm [theragnarokd on tumblr](theragnarokd.tumblr.com), come say hi.


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